Running Start in Worcester is all about coworking

By Priyanka Dayal McCluskey, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Sunday

Apr 28, 2013 at 8:00 AM

WORCESTER — If renting an office is too expensive, try renting a desk.

About a dozen small-business owners and freelancers are doing this at a nonprofit startup incubator on Lincoln Street called Running Start Inc. Now Running Start is planning an expansion near Gateway Park that will have room for up to 300 people. It will also include lab space for startups with a manufacturing focus.

It all will be built around the concept of coworking, or shared office space. For independent workers, it's an alternative to working from the lonely kitchen table or the noisy coffee shop. And for entrepreneurs on a budget, it's much cheaper than finding, renting and furnishing an entire office. Coworking lends itself to creative, social people who like to be around other creative, social people.

"Being immersed in people that are creative and motivated and full of ideas and energy is just an invigorating environment to be in," said Kevin Harrington, founder and chief technology officer of Neuron Robotics, which occupies lab space in the building Running Start is renovating. "Through those casual interactions, you get new ideas, better ideas."

The coworking concept is new to Worcester. It has been in Boston and Cambridge — the Cambridge Innovation Center is a well-known example — for about five years. There are 853 coworking spaces across the country, and globally, coworking spaces have grown 87 percent over the past year, according to research from the site Deskwanted.com.

On average, Deskwanted found, the cost to rent a desk in the U.S. is about $240 a month. It's twice that much in Cambridge. In Worcester, Running Start is offering space for just $75 a month.

In addition to being affordable and flexible, coworking space allows small-business owners to keep each other's spirits high, noted Steven Gold, professor of entrepreneurship practice at Babson Global, a division of Babson College in Wellesley.

"Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely game, and one of the most significant factors for entrepreneurial success, especially in the early days, is staying motivated," he said. "For an individual or a small team of people to have support when they're down, or a high-five when they're up … it's really invaluable."

Running Start opened in September and since then, co-founders Ryan H. Leary and Brenna Venkatesh have been honing their vision. They're thinking bigger than they were last year, hence, the expansion project. And they've started a broad fundraising campaign to raise $1.4 million over five years from corporate sponsors, public grants and private donations.

They're leasing space in a century-old mill building at 95 Prescott St., next to the Gateway Park development owned by Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One floor will have manufacturing equipment that can be shared by companies making and testing products. The other floor will house an array of desks, chairs, tables and sofas where people from different companies can work in one big space. There also will be conference rooms.

Renovations of the 10,000-square-foot space on Prescott Street will begin in June.

"We want to make it as collaborative and as fun an environment as we can," Ms. Venkatesh said.

The coworking space Running Start opened on Lincoln Street last fall is occupied by a mix of businesspeople, from a video editor to a Web designer to an event planner.

Ms. Venkatesh is hoping the space will be a draw for Worcester's young college graduates, as it was for Mr. Harrington, founder of Neuron Robotics, a recent WPI graduate. He looked at spaces in the Boston area before deciding on Worcester for its location and significantly lower costs.

Running Start is also catering to more experienced entrepreneurs, like Ron Ranauro, who has started three companies, most recently a software consulting business for health care and life science companies. Mr. Ranauro has been working out of his house in Auburn and is looking forward to moving his business, Incite Advisors, into Running Start's coworking space as soon as it is ready.

"I was very intrigued and interested," he said. "It spoke to an immediate need that I had being in the area and having a business and trying to get it off the ground."

Mr. Leary is excited as much about Running Start's new location as he is to see it expand. On Prescott Street, it will be a neighbor of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, another small-business incubator.

"It's all about that ecosystem," he said. "It's not just about Running Start."

Kevin O'Sullivan, president and chief executive of MBI, said Running Start will complement the neighborhood without competing directly with MBI, which has a specific focus on biotech companies that need specialized lab equipment.

Fundraising is the big challenge for new incubators like Running Start, he said.

"Incubation is all the rage right now," he said. "We all see it as the panacea to help small companies move forward, but it's not easy."